I was taking a few pictures of my friends at the beach and my pictures were ruined by the shadows caused by the sun. Early morning or late afternoon would probably be ideal but it was around 10:30am and the bright sun was causing a lot of shadow in the face. I tried using flash but it washed out the white shirt they were wearing. Any tips/advice is greatly apreciated.

What mode should I be using? P/A/S/M
Aperture? ( i was using 50mm at the time)
White Balance: Sun or Shadow mode?

I don't have any advanced post processing software....just picasa on my pc and iphoto on my brand new macbook. I'm thinking of getting Adobe Lightroom or wait and save for CS2.

well rule of thumb is avoid the hours when the sun is at its brightest and highest, if its too bright look for shadows to put your subjects in, if you can get yourself a reflector or make it yourself. that will help you allot and give you great effects.

As to what to do with your pictures, I don't really know, I feel digital cameras are not very forgiving when it comes to over or underexposure. So as to your photographs I have no idea what you could do. I would recomend searching in the forum for free photo adjustment software, I've read that there are some. Also if you're a student you can get a discount on photoshop (quite a big one).

In bright sun, if you cant get into the shadows there is really only 2 things you can do.
1. Use a reflector to bounce light back onto the shadow side of the face.
2. Use fill in flash, set your flash gun to one stop below your aperture. ie if your lens is set to f.16, set your flash to f.11
To stop white clothing burning out too much, measure the light there or make sure your camera is on a centre weighted setting and lock the settings whilst centering on the shirt.

I was taking a few pictures of my friends at the beach and my pictures were ruined by the shadows caused by the sun. Early morning or late afternoon would probably be ideal but it was around 10:30am and the bright sun was causing a lot of shadow in the face. I tried using flash but it washed out the white shirt they were wearing. Any tips/advice is greatly apreciated.

What mode should I be using? P/A/S/M
Aperture? ( i was using 50mm at the time)
White Balance: Sun or Shadow mode?

I don't have any advanced post processing software....just picasa on my pc and iphoto on my brand new macbook. I'm thinking of getting Adobe Lightroom or wait and save for CS2.

Thanks,

Alex

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for those of us on a budget, I always highly recommend the GIMP. Gimp.org

Setting camera to Av or Tv will allow the camera to meter the ambient light as normal.

the flash should act as a fill flash in this mode. If shutter speeds for the ambient light are higher than your synch speed (1/250th on my 20D) then set the flash to High Speed mode (FP setting) and you can shoot at higher speeds although the distance your flash will be effective at will be drastically reduced.

For fill this should be fine. You can shoot in bright sunlight at higher shutter speeds and the pop of flash will brighten up those dark shadows.

In this mode I sometimes expose for the sky and the flash will expose my subject correctly giving a pretty balanced exposure.